By Constitution Staff

On December 13, Governor Kevin Stitt issued Executive Order 2023-31 to end the use of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in Oklahoma’s bureaucracy and institutions of higher education.

Stitt summarized his order as an effort to “encourage equal opportunity, rather than promising equal outcomes.” To do this, he explained, means “Shifting focus away from exclusivity and discrimination, and toward opportunity and merit. We’re taking politics out of education and focusing on preparing students for the workforce.”

The order requires state agencies and institutions for higher education to initiate a review of DEI positions, departments, activities, procedures, and programs to eliminate and dismiss non-critical personnel. “State agencies and institutions for higher education shall not utilize state funds, property, or resources to:

1) Grant or support diversity, equity, and inclusion positions, departments, activities, procedures, or programs to the extent they grant preferential treatment based on person’s particular race, color, sex, ethnicity, or national origin over another’s;

2) Mandate any person to participate in, listen to, or receive any education, training, activities, procedures, or programming to the extent such education, training, activity, or procedure grants preferences based on one person’s particular race, color, sex, ethnicity, or nation origin over another’s;

3) Mandate any person swear, certify, or agree to any loyalty oath that favors or prefers on particular race, color, sex, ethnicity, or national origin over another;

4) Mandate any person to certify or declare agreement with, recognition of, adherence to, any particular political, philosophical, religious, or other ideological viewpoint;

5) Mandate any applicant for employment provide a diversity, equity, and inclusion statement or give any applicant for employment preferential consideration based on the provision of such a diversity, equity, and inclusion statement; or

6) Mandate any person to declare their pronouns.”

In his 2023 State of the State address, Governor Stitt called out wasteful and discriminatory DEI initiatives, saying, in part: “...when we send our kids to college, we expect our tuition to pay for their education, not their indoctrination. I want our universities to have less DEI officers and more career placement counselors.”

Speaking in support of the executive order at the governor’s press conference was Patrice Onwuka, director of the Independent Women’s Forum’s Center for Economic Opportunity. “Race, ethnicity, gender, and heritage should not be used to discriminate against any person. Yet, discriminatory DEI programming has done damage on college campuses – fomenting division between students, eroding free speech rights, threatening academic freedom, and bloating school bureaucracies.”

She added that while “legal protections already outlaw race-and sex-based discrimination,” Governor Stitt’s “executive order guards against efforts to bypass those protections.”

David Safavian, general counsel for the American Conservative Union, explained why such an order is needed in a socially conservative state like Oklahoma. “For years, universities and government agencies, even those in red states, have become increasingly beholden to a coercive liberal agenda, often framed under the banner of DEI,” but Stitt’s action “abolishing DEI bureaucracies and ending mandatory ‘diversity’ training and DEI hiring statements will ensure Oklahoma’s institutions can focus on the diversity of ideas, rather than shame-based political activism.”

Not surprisingly, progressive legislators from the cities of Oklahoma’s two premier universities – the University of Oklahoma in Norman, and Oklahoma State University in Stillwater – issued statements condemning Governor Kevin Stitt’s executive order, curtailing the use of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in higher education. University of Oklahoma President Joseph Harroz joined them, issuing his own statement, in which he expressed disappointment that the order “reaches into college campuses across Oklahoma and eliminates offices of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.”

Harroz lamented, “While we are obligated to comply, the University of Oklahoma will always remain committed to its core principles that make OU a place of belonging where the American Dream is available to all.” Then, presuming to speak for not only his university, but all Oklahomans, Harroz added, “We know, too, that our students, university, community, and the citizens of Oklahoma are resolute in their commitment to these values.”

State Representative Jared Deck, a Norman Democrat, was even more strident, arguing that Stitt’s executive order was “an attack on first-generation students, students with disabilities, students who are veterans, international students, not to mention our countless students who are racially, culturally, religiously, and economically diverse.” Similar remarks were made by other Democratic legislators (although the Oklahoma House of Representatives is overwhelmingly Republican, Democrats tend to dominate the university towns of Norman and Stillwater). Another Norman Democrat legislator, Jacob Rosecrants, charged that Stitt “only listens to his far-right base.”

Stillwater’s Democrat Representative Trish Ranson even asserted that Stitt’s order “illustrates the fact that he’s not experienced true discrimination.”

Unfortunately, most of the Oklahoma media did little to challenge these gross distortions of Stitt’s actual order.